Vivid colours,
deep backgrounds, floating heads. This is Kino/Film, a new show at the Gallery of Russian Art and Design (GRAD) in
London which examines the golden age of Soviet film posters - many of them
rarely seen before. Kicking off the year of Russian/UK culture, the exhibition
offers a unique glimpse into a radical period in the history of both Soviet film
making and promotion.

Taking its cue
from Lenin’s declaration that film was “the most important art” for promoting socialist
values, the 1920s was a phenomenal time for Soviet cinema, both for documentary
and features. A relatively new art form, it flourished under the spirit of
revolution as young directors embarked on a journey of experimentation.

“It was
creativity on an unprecedented scale,” says art historian and film critic Lutz
Becker, a curator of the exhibition, adding that films of the 1920s exuded an
immense positive energy.

In a society
that aimed to transform humankind through industrialisation and technology,
film-makers were encouraged to break with conventions and develop new ones. Many
notable and popular films appeared during this period, from the iconic works of
Sergei
Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin, October)
and Vsevolod Pudovkin (The End of St Petersburg, Mother), to pioneering documentaries by Dziga Vertov (Man with a Movie
Camera).

These directors
introduced radical cinematic techniques such as montage, repetition, asymmetric
viewpoints and dramatic camera angles, which set new standards for the
newsreel, the feature and the documentary film. Although primarily intended as
propaganda, these works transcended their ideological subject and went on to
inspire generations of cinematographers outside Russia, and still influence
contemporary practice.

Take, for
instance, the editing and montage style pioneered by Eistenstein and used so
masterfully in his famous Odessa steps massacre scene in Battleship Potemkin
(1925). Its powerful emotional and theatrical
effects have been widely mirrored in famous scenes in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho or in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.

After massacre scene of Battleship Potemkin in Odessa, the steps calls by the film - Potemkin steps. Source: Youtube

Meanwhile, the
aesthetic documentary experiments of Vertov gave rise to a cinema verité style of cinematography and inspired such diverse film-makers as Jean-Luc
Godard and the French nouvelle vague movement of
the 1960s, and Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) in
the present day.

First time film director decided to be totally different from theater art. Source: Youtube

Pudovkin was
another great pioneer of the montage technique. His best-known work is Mother
(1926), which was internationally acclaimed for the
radical intensity of its editing techniques, as well as for its emotion and
lyricism. Experiments by other notable cinematographers, such as Aleksandr
Dovzhenko and Lev Kuleshov, also made their mark on world cinema.

Pudovkin's mother, an example of a movie with emotions, not ideology in the foreground. Source: Youtube

Silent film posters reflected this prevailing spirit of innovation. Across
the country, new movies were advertised with the help of radical designs by
some of the most talented and
creative artists, including the Stenberg brothers, Yakov Ruklevsky, Aleksandr
Naumov Nikolai Prusakov and Mikhail Dlugach.

Each artist was
unique: the posters of the Stenberg brothers, for example, were reminiscent of
their own Constructivist sculptures, while Supermatist designs were a trademark
of Prusakov. Many of them had a background not only in art but in architecture,
stage design and photography.

These artists
created a new ‘visual vocabulary’ by translating practices they saw on screen
into print. Experiments with geometry, colour and typography were employed to
capture the essence and energy of each cinematic production, creating a
distinctive and highly influential body of work.

The exhibition
stresses this symbiotic relationship by showing excerpts from some of the films
alongside the posters. The ‘cinematic’ playfulness of some of the prints is
exhilarating. The Three Million Case for
instance was a Soviet comedy based on popular American slapstick movies.
Although the film itself has been somewhat forgotten, the poster design, with a
head looming above two vignettes in which another character scales a building,
is still fresh and vibrant more than 80 years on.

Elena Sudakova,
the founding director of GRAD, explains the lasting appeal of these designs,
saying: “The dynamism of the
images and the juxtaposition of unexpected elements make these posters much
fresher and more exciting than most film advertising today.”

Somewhat
ironically, this new artistic vocabulary born in the Soviet Union went on to
inspire commercial print artists in the United States, as they became aware
that modernist graphics would attract the eye of consumers. Elements of Soviet
design appeared on packaging and in houseware patterns.

Both posters and
films were the aesthetic of Soviet revolution and modernisation. In the hands of Eistenstein or the
Stenberg brothers, they became ideological, a mechanism for socialist change.
At the same time, they were never conformist or puritanical. They aimed to disorient,
thrill and transform.

This is why the
ideas of these artists continue to resonate with film-makers and designers
working today, and are certain to inspire many more works yet to be made.